Heat and temperature at junior high school level: relationships between teaching and learning in a constructivist perspective

Abstract

In this paper we will explain, in an exploratory and preliminary character, the possibilities and contributions of a Teaching Model as an auxiliary instrument to planning, development and evaluation of proposals for science teaching that are geared at the promotion of cognitive changes. Thus, we will describe the instruments used in the planning of an introductory course on heat and temperature with 8 th graders, and we will analyze their results. The proposed model tries to establish pedagogical stages conceived from the successive triads that mark the evolution of causal thinking in intra, inter and transobjectal terms (Piaget &Garcia, 1987). Research findings of this work, based on the analysis of written material produced by the students throughout the process lead us to affirm the intrinsic complexity of human learning, understanding complexity as historical, irreversible, unforeseeable, and undertermined phenomena ( Prigogine & Stengers, 1997/1998). We conclude with considerations about the range of the realized changes in science teaching and about the groundlessness of a linear reading of their findings. The model analysis will be carried out in terms of teaching, learning and, mainly, of the relationships between teaching and learning.